Creating Stories: Author Blueprint, #1

Foreword

Return to the Table of Contents

If you're reading this book, you must have an interest in writing a story.  What kind of story doesn't matter.  Whether you intend to write a short story, a play, a script, a novel or even a memoir, this book will help you get it done. 

How can that be? you ask.  Simply because a novel, a script, a memoir, a play, a short story are all stories.  And no matter what type of story you have in mind, each needs a set of common elements such as characters, plots, scenes, settings, character arcs and more. 

The only difference between the types of stories listed above is the output.  What the manuscript looks like, in other words.  The manuscripts for a novel and a play will look very different, but the process of producing the manuscripts is exactly the same.

If you skim the book you’ll see a lot of material, perhaps a daunting amount of material.  If you’re a beginning writer, don’t panic; you don’t have to master all the material in one bite.  The best approach is to concentrate on one aspect at a time in your writing.  Once you’ve become adept at that aspect try another one.  To begin, I’d recommend focusing on character building.  Second, master scene design.  After that, go where your curiosity takes you.

Let's put that issue aside and dive right in.  Stories are the result of three separate creative processes:

Creative ideas

Story design

Storytelling techniques

I can't help an author with the ideas, but this book is about the last two, the story design process and storytelling.

This book is primarily aimed at the writer trying to master the craft of writing stories and telling those stories in a way that will hold the reader's attention.  It will also be useful to experienced writers as a refresher course to correct the slovenly writing habits that we all fall into over time.  This includes me.  I'm constantly searching for (and finding!) defective writing habits that I have developed over time.

The premise behind this book is that stories don't pop into the author's head fully formed.  Another premise is that one can't write a story from a single idea.  Creating a story requires the author to come up with a number of ideas and then package those ideas inside the story.

The author needs ideas on characters, plot events, setting and scene design to mention a few areas.  Coming up with all these story ideas is easier for some people and harder for others.  Thus, a story is the product of many hours of patient work on the different facets that are needed to build a compelling story.  In some cases, you may spend as much time in thinking as you do in writing.  This is especially true in the design stages of the project.

What is story design?  To me, it's the process of developing all the story elements, characters, plot events and so forth before beginning the storytelling process.  Only after I've completed all the design work will I start writing the first draft.  More about that later.  In the case of my novel — Falstaff’s Big Gamble — the story design work took three months.  Only after that time did I start to write the first draft.

Story design and storytelling techniques are much more important than the ability to write well.  That sounds blasphemous, doesn't it?  The fact is, editors and publishers don't buy stories because they are well-written.  Editors and publishers buy stories that have superior story design and utilize storytelling techniques.  If that story also happens to be well-written, that is a bonus, but it won't enter into the buy decision.

I'm sure some people will claim I am stifling creativity by offering a design process.  I disagree.  Nothing in my process stifles creativity; rather my process channels creative ideas so that more time is available to the author to be creative.  I realize the process I describe won't satisfy every writer.  Many of them will feel they can't get their mind to adapt to my way of working through a story design.  That's cool.  For them, I say take whatever you find practical and use it.  Ignore the rest.

Some of the issues addressed in this book are the ones that books and manuals on writing either gloss over or explain using a wealth of technical-sounding gibberish.  My approach uses plain language and gives simple examples to explain these concepts.

This book layout involves four parts.  Part 1 discusses story setting and character development.  Part 2 deals with plots and scene design.  Part 3 is all about storytelling techniques.  Topics included are point of view, foreshadowing, stimulus and reaction and other topics.  Part 4 contains stuff that doesn't fit neatly into the other parts.  These include writing humor and satire, writing software, mind-maps and other topics.

If you have specific questions about the material in this book, you can email me at hanque (at) verizon (dot) net and I'll try to answer them.

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED to all the many writers who taught me how to create stories by critiquing my early, pathetic attempts to write a short story.

Chapter 1: Getting Started

Return to the Table of Contents

Hank Quense: To begin with, let's discuss a few preliminary concepts and ideas.

Author: What?  Never mind this nebulous garbage.  Let's get into the good stuff.

HQ: You need to understand a few things first.

Author:  I need to know about characters and plots.

HQ: Hey!  Who's writing this book?  You or me?

Author: You.

HQ: That's right.  And I have stuff I have to discuss with you.

Author: All right.  We'll do it your way.

HQ: Thanks.  Now that we've settled that issue, let's move on to the ideas and concepts I want to tell you about.

Beginning Thoughts

Do you have a story to write?  A story consists of several mandatory design elements.  There are also a number of storytelling techniques that modern readers expect to see in the story.

This book concentrates on those two areas: story design and storytelling.

So, what is a story?  Let's agree on a definition.  I like these two definitions by two different and very prolific authors.

A story is a narrative description of a character struggling to solve a problem.  Nothing more than that.  And nothing less.  Ben Bova The Craft of Writing Science Fiction.

A story consists of a character in a context with a problem. Based on Algis Budrys's book Writing to the Point.

Both of these statements say essentially the same thing. The key elements are: character, struggle, problem, context (setting).

I find it interesting that the definitions say story but don't mention what type of story such as a novel or a script.  The reason for that is that the type of story is irrelevant.  A story is a story.  The definition applies to any and all types of stories since all types of stories require characters, plots, setting, scenes and other elements. 

The only difference between a novel and a script is the way the manuscript looks.  Formatting a novel is much different from formatting a script.

The only difference between a novel and a memoir is that one is fictional and one is not fictional.

These definitions above are what I will use in describing the various elements in story design and storytelling.  Stories are about characters.  If your story concerns itself with events, it's history, even if the history is made up.  Stories are about how the characters react to those events not about the events themselves.

Before we get too far into the book, I should explain that there are two types of authors: planners and pantsters.  Planners — and I'm one of these — plan everything out in advance.  Pantsters — those who fly by the seat of their pants — don't believe in planning.  They jump in and start writing and are always surprised by the ending.

If you're a pantster, you still have to develop characters and scenes even if the plot hatches along the way to the climax.  This means that some of the material in this book will be pertinent to you.  Other parts, not so much since you don't do planning.

Writing the first draft

So, you get this great story idea.  You jump in front of your computer and you start writing the first scene.  As you type away, you're thinking, Wow!  This will be my best story ever.  You finish the first scene and start on the second one still pumped up.  After a thousand or fifteen hundred words, you run out of gas.  You stare at the screen and wonder, What happened?  Where is the great story I thought I had?

What happened is you started to write a story from a single idea.  That will never work.  A short story needs at least five or six good ideas.  A longer work like a novel requires more than a hundred.  You need ideas about plot events.  You need ideas about characters.  You need ideas about the story setting and about story events.  You need ideas about scene setting.  You need ideas about character arcs, emotional arcs, and myriad other elements.

The key question here is when do you start writing the first draft?

Let's look at this from a different perspective.  For purposes of this analysis, we'll say the total amount of work involved in developing the story design is represented by the circle below. 

This work includes all the design work and writing the first draft.  Of the total amount of work involved in producing that first draft, the actual writing of that draft is about fifteen percent of the total and it has to be the last fifteen percent, not the first.

Starting the first draft as soon as a story idea occurs is a common mistake beginning writers make.  It takes experience and patience to step back and design the story before attempting to write the draft.

Another way of looking at this is to consider the story as a new